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Some of you thought I was too hard on evangelical leader Tony Campolo in my last Blog. I am grateful for your comments.

In response I will underscore what I tried to say, which is that I am glad Campolo was willing to tell the evangelical community that he now believes it is right to accept gays and lesbians in the church and to support their right to marry.

Yet I still believe accepting his change of mind and heart at face value is enough without saying more. His conversion may not be too late, but it is late nonetheless, coming as it does after a significant surge in public support for gay marriage in the last two years.

Perhaps more important, though, is understanding the context in which campolo has lived and moved and had his being as a Christian all his life. That context is evangelical Christianity. Simply knowing what they believe leaves no doubt that his statement will create a firestorm of controversy.

According to the statement of faith of the National Association of Evangelicals, evangelical Christians believe:

…the Bible is the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
…that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy
Spirit.
…in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
…for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
…in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
…in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
…in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Interestingly enough, none of these beliefs says unequivocally that only Christians are the beloved of God, but that is clearly what they add up to in the minds of evangelicals. That is to say, believing in Jesus as “Lord” is the key to being “saved unto the resurrection of life.”

But what is truly striking about these beliefs both individually and collectively is that they point to the fact that evangelical Christianity lives and dies by absolutes.

“Absolute” means “not limited in any way.” Evangelical beliefs carry this tone, which suggests that they think their beliefs transcend human frailties. They do not worry about what they believe being wrong, misguided, without historical foundation, contrary to known evidence, influenced by their own emotional, psychological, or spiritual needs, or in any way shaped by tradition that itself may be flawed.

Moreover, thinking in absolutes is why evangelical moral and ethical principles are rigid. Should they compromise they would in their own eyes be undercutting the absolutes on which they have based their lives.

Right is right, wrong is wrong, and they have no doubt about which is which.

In this context it is easy to see how Tony Campolo changing his beliefs about homosexuality will stir up trouble with other evangelicals. They will see him as an apostate because the very nature of their faith means that anyone who does not believe what they believe is not a real Christian.

That is why Christians like me who reject evangelical absolutes as core to Christianity are thorns in their flesh. We have the audacity to insist that we are Christian even though we don’t believe a lot or even most of what they believe about Jesus, God, or moral and ethical issues.

Sadly Tony Campolo will probably find himself to be a man without a Christian home. He will likely be rejected by evangelicals, but it remains an open question at this point if he will be fully comfortable with the kind of Christianity that sees absolutes as anathema to an informed and honest faith.

I am quite sure that progressive Christians can embraced people like Tony Campolo when they choose to move beyond the rigidity of evangelicalism.

The real question is whether or not he (and those like him) can truly embrace us.